110. PixelJunk VR: Dead Hungry (Q-games, Playstation VR, 2017)

I played through and enjoyed Q-games' previous offerings PixelJunk Monsters and PixelJunk Shooter on the Playstation 3, so I gladly picked up their latest VR offering when it went on sale. Monsters and Shooter were fairly relaxing, co-op titles that were fun enough for me to putz through with a significant other, so it kind of took me by surprise how fast and demanding Dead Hungry is.

The game has you manning a food truck that is dispensing hamburgers to hungry customers, who happen to be zombies. Once a zombie eats enough food, they turn back into a human, cheering and running off. The challenge of the game (other than navigating the VR controls) is the timing of all of the food you are able to make. You can grill meat, fry shrimp and french fries, and bake pizzas in an oven, all of which take different amounts of time. You can also throw sodas to the zombies, but his only stalls them.

Once I got into a good rhythm, I was able to make it through half of Dead Hungry's 10 levels with relative ease, not that there weren't stressful moments, but I pretty much knew right away if a level was going my way or not. The most interesting thing that I found was the music. The game has a single speed metal song that is playing in each level, and there is a physical radio in the truck with you. I noticed that there were some tapes, and you can cram them into the radio, but they are just 2 other speed metal songs. Once I came to accept this, I felt like I understood that it helped put me in the mind of a fast food worker: repetitive task, angry (zombie-like) customers, only speed metal keeping me going.

4/5, my favorite of the PixelJunk hames that I've played, because it's the most human, despite being about zombies